The mind, Doing its number
I read the beautiful poem, felt it entering,
filling me, the way a drink of water spills
through the sluice of each cell, and I didn’t
want to read any more poems. I wanted only
this one. There was this loveliness now
in the world, put there deliberately by someone
filled with longing. I would have kissed the one
who wrote it, I was ready to kiss just about
anybody, so filled was I with agape
and arousal. Then mind rushed in: I tried
to refuse, but I was as we are in orgasm,
when we can’t imagine even the possibility
of sin. I couldn’t shut myself fast enough
to keep out the dead child, face beaten in.
(reprinted with thanks from the Women's Review of Books)
